Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Heirloom And Hybrid Corn In The American Corn Belt: An Ethnography Of Seed Saving Practices, Rachelle Halaska

Theses and Dissertations

This ethnographic study examines the practices and context of contemporary heirloom corn seed saving practices and projects in the American Corn Belt. It examines heirloom corn conservation and hand pollination practices at Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa in 2015. From there the study extends to interviews with heirloom farmers, breeders and gardeners in Wisconsin and Illinois. The findings indicate that the lines between the mainstream and the margins of corn production are highly blurred, and that there is a considerable amount of cross-pollination of ideas and practices between alternative corn farming and dominant industrial hybrid production in the American …

Collecting Aztalan: An Analysis Of The Chipped Stone Projectile Points From The Milwaukee Public Museum’S Aztalan (Je-0001) Legacy Collections, Kevin Akemann

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a qualitative analysis of chipped stone projectile points from the Milwaukee Public Museum that were obtained from private collectors who reportedly surface collected these artifacts from the site of Aztalan (47-JE-0001). Private collections like these, referred to as Legacy Collections, are the result of early collecting and excavation practices, by private and professional individuals, and in this research, have been only partially examined in relation to Aztalan and mostly overlooked in favor of materials with more reliable and scientific provenience. Through this research I developed a database from the MPM's digital inventory, handwritten catalogs, accession records, and …

Sexual Dimorphism And The Shape Of The Proximal Tibia In A Radiographic Sample, Emily Eiseman

Theses and Dissertations

SEXUAL DIMORPHISM AND THE SHAPE OF THE PROXIMAL TIBIA IN A RADIOGRAPHIC SAMPLE

This study investigates the use of radiographs to determine sexual dimorphism in the shape of the tibia. The goal of the research was to identify a small set of markers that would allow researchers to efficiently and accurately determine a person’s sex from a radiograph of the proximal tibia.

The sample consisted of radiographs including 75 females and 46 males ranging in age from 21 to 81. Measurements were taken on 27 points around the area of the knee including the tibia, patella, and femur. The measurements …

Looking For Group: Sociality, Embodiment, And Institutions In World Of Warcraft, Christopher J. Cooley

Theses and Dissertations

This ethnography examines the varying degrees of conflict between multiple stakeholders involved in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft (WoW). The game’s designers, like many software developers in the contemporary world, tend to be guided by an ideology influenced by classical liberalism, but also inspired by a utopian view of technology in general. That ideological position has directly affected many aspects of the game, from the largely unregulated in-game economy, to the strong emphasis on individual mastery of the game’s systems to progress through the complete content of the game world. World of Warcraft advertises itself not …

Food For Thought: An Analysis Of The Robenhausen Botanicals At The Milwaukee Public Museum, Ann S. Eberwein

Theses and Dissertations

Museum collections excavated from archaeological sites represent an intersection of disciplines and provoke innovative approaches to the study of these material aspects of culture. Botanical collections of food remains in particular, provide an opportunity to interrogate the way in which culinary practices in the past are understood. The circum-Alpine lake dwelling complex of central Europe includes hundreds of archaeological sites dating to the Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Age; many of these sites are known for exceptional preservation of organic material due to a waterlogged, anaerobic environment. Robenhausen, located in eastern Switzerland was one of many lake dwellings discovered in the …

Pena, Pinahua, And Prestige: Shame And Linguistic Insecurity In Upper Balsas Classrooms, Heather Gabrielle Thomas Flores

Theses and Dissertations

This ethnography is a topical analysis of the Indigenous Education system in rural Guerrero, Mexico. The purpose of this research is to draw out the correlations between coercive monolingual ‘Spanish only’ language policies implemented during the mid 20th century and the systematic disintegration of the Nahuatl language within what were once monolingual Nahua communities in the Upper Balsas valley. The data presented in this paper is framed and analyzed through language ideologies discourse. The conceptualizations of language held within the cultural ideology allow for the complexities surrounding language loss and revitalization to be taken into consideration within their dynamic and …

Comparison Of Play Frequency In Four Sympatric Monkey Species In Kibale National Park, Uganda, Sara G. Lucci

Theses and Dissertations

This study describes play in red colobus (Procolobus rufomitratus), grey-cheeked mangabeys (Lophocebus albigena), black-and-white colobus (Colobus guereza), and redtail monkeys (Cercopithecus ascanius) to test Instinct-Practice Theory. Solitary locomotor play was different among the species. Rough-and-tumble play was different between male and female redtail monkeys. These results partially support Instinct-Practice Theory.

That Other Form Of Madness: A Multidisciplinary Study Of Infectious Disease Within The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery, Helen Marie Werner

Theses and Dissertations

Between the years of 1882 and 1925, the Milwaukee County Poor Farm buried several

thousand members of Milwaukee’s indigent population in what would later be designated

Cemetery II. In 1991 and early 1992, after discovery of the cemetery during construction of parts

of the Milwaukee Regional Medical Center, 1,649 burials were excavated. The graves had long

been abandoned and the headstones bulldozed, leaving a register of burials without any obvious

way of associating each individual with their identity. A copy of the register is curated at the

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Archaeological Research Laboratory. The Milwaukee

County Poor Farm was a …

Everyday Perseverance & Meaningful Toil: Mapping The (In)Distinguishable Process Of Recovery Post-Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, Louisiana, Monique Hassman

Theses and Dissertations

For nearly a century, anthropological scholarship on disaster has contributed to advancing emergency preparation and management, however examination focusing on survivors’ return and responses in the aftermath of catastrophe, specifically the ways in which residents work to recover—if at all—remains far from comprehensive, especially in urban, post-industrial settings.

Following calamity, what remains? What is disturbed? What becomes reconstructed? Who repairs the tattered social fabric or restores the built environment? And how do these processes transpire? These questions summarize the research interests of this dissertation, which examines the place-making practices not of experts or administrators, but, rather, those enacted by (extra) …

¡Tú No Eres Fácil!: Styling Black Hair And Language In A Dominican Beauty Salon, Amber Teresa Domingue

Theses and Dissertations

Women of the African diaspora living in the United States undergo a process of racialization that is informed by both their physical attributes and linguistic decisions. Fieldwork conducted in a Dominican beauty salon in Atlanta, GA during the summer of 2018 provided the data that is analyzed to explore the relationship between Dominican and Black women through the lens of hair care. Dominican stylists who spoke predominantly Spanish were able to provide services to Black women who spoke predominantly English using a combination of verbal and non-verbal communication. While previous scholarship on Dominicans in the United States has been overwhelmingly …

Yerba Mate: National Project To Emerging Superfood, Ana Fochesatto

Theses and Dissertations

Yerba mate, Ilex paranguariensis, is a shrub commonly found in the Atlantic Forest of South

America which covers part of northeast Argentina, eastern Paraguay, and southern Brazil. The

dried leaves and stem of the tree are used to make an infusion, called mate, used first by indigenous

Guaraní people. Today, yerba mate is widely consumed in the Southern Cone region and is

regarded as the national drink of Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. I argue that yerba mate has

entered the U.S. as a “superfood,” marketed as a product with nutritional and symbolic medicinal

values.

In this thesis, I trace yerba …

Foodways And A Violent Landscape: A Comparative Study Of Oneota And Langford Human-Animal-Environmental Relationships, Rachel Mctavish

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT:

FOODWAYS AND A VIOLENT LANDSCAPE: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ONEOTA AND LANGFORD HUMAN-ANIMAL-ENVIRONMENTAL RELATIONSHIPS

by

Rachel C. McTavish

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2019

Under the Supervision of Robert Jeske

The goal of this research is to investigate the nature of Upper Mississippian human-animal-environmental relationships (circa AD 1050-1450), to evaluate the role of resource management, the role of sustainability, and the multi-faceted nature of human-animal relationships, to understand how these choices are related to adaptations to structural violence. The research uses the Koshkonong Locality of southeastern Wisconsin and the Fox/Des Plaines Locality as case studies to compare divergent Upper Mississippian …

Less Than Human: A Study Of The Institutional Origins Of The Medical Waste Recovered At The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery, Alexander Anthony

Theses and Dissertations

Poor Laws enacted in the early 19th-century condemned the most destitute to confinement in almshouses, poor farms, and workhouses. These laws paralleled contemporary Anatomy Acts that turned the unclaimed bodies of individuals who died at those institutions over to medical facilities for dissection, often simultaneously removing anatomization as a punishment for murder. In essence, pauperism became punishable by anatomization. Thus, dissection served the dual purpose of reinforcing social identity amongst the lower class and privileging the social identity of upper-class medical students. This study is an analysis of the material medical waste recovered from the graves of individuals interred at …

Using Historic Glo Data And Gis To Assess The Potential For Local Bison Bison Near Two Wisconsin Late Prehistoric Oneota Localities, Andrew Michael Saleh

Theses and Dissertations

Bison (Bison bison) remains are rare in the archaeological record of Wisconsin. This thesis uses a Geographic Information System (GIS) to better understand native vegetation near sites with reported bison bone to assess their ecological viability to support local bison herds. The distribution of bison bone recovered in archaeological contexts in Wisconsin can be summarized as follows: few sites report bison remains, the archaeological contexts that do report bison are clustered in a few Late Prehistoric period locations (approximately A.D. 1300-1650), and bison remains are rare in comparison to other fauna at those sites (Arzigian et al. 1989; Boszhardt 1989, …

Lithic Technological Organization At The Aztalan Site (47-Je-0001), Robert William Vander Heiden

Theses and Dissertations

Chipped stone artifacts represent just one aspect of a complex framework of behavioral adaptations to social and environmental forces, each requiring significant investments of both time and energy. This project consists of a complete lithic analysis of all chipped stone materials recovered by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee field schools during 1984, 2011, and 2013 from the Aztalan site (47JE01), located in Southeastern Wisconsin. This assemblage includes 1,202 pieces of lithic debitage and 200 chipped stone tools. Through employing individual flake analysis of all debitage, this thesis has produced a large database of information that can provide valuable insight into the technological …

Lithic Technological Organization At The Aztalan Site (47-Je-0001), Robert William Vander Heiden

Theses and Dissertations

Chipped stone artifacts represent just one aspect of a complex framework of behavioral adaptations to social and environmental forces, each requiring significant investments of both time and energy. This project consists of a complete lithic analysis of all chipped stone materials recovered by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee field schools during 1984, 2011, and 2013 from the Aztalan site (47JE01), located in Southeastern Wisconsin. This assemblage includes 1,202 pieces of lithic debitage and 200 chipped stone tools. Through employing individual flake analysis of all debitage, this thesis has produced a large database of information that can provide valuable insight into the technological …

Minors In The Mines: Archaeological Indicators Of Child Labor In Prehistoric Mining Contexts In Europe, Nikita K. Werner

Theses and Dissertations

Developing a theoretical and methodological framework for the study of children, childhood, and child labor in prehistory has two goals. The first is to reintegrate children into cultural narratives in light of the increased popularity of the topic among archaeologists; the second is to equip researchers with the tools to apply developing theories to prehistoric populations in which there is material and physical evidence of child labor. Using the prehistoric mining complex of Hallstatt in alpine Austria as a case study, this thesis highlights how a reevaluation of existing data can provide a more inclusive interpretation of childhood even in …

The Waiting Room: Re-Making Adulthood Among America’S Underemployed, Susan Hill

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation takes as its starting point the problem of underemployment among young adults in the post-recession United States. Recent studies have shown that the number of college-educated Americans employed in positions not requiring a degree has reached historic highs. Such analyses are limited, however, in that they do not capture the lived effects of such trends—how underemployment insinuates itself into a person's worldview and identity. This ethnographic study delves into the intimate correlates of macroeconomic change by investigating the impact of underemployment on notions of adulthood among recent college graduates working in the Minneapolis-St. Paul restaurant industry. For the …

Community Identity, Culinary Traditions And Foodways In The Western Great Lakes, Jennifer R. Haas

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation project examines for evidence of substantial differences in community and community identity, as expressed through culinary traditions and foodways, of Early and Middle Woodland populations in the western Great Lakes region from circa 100 BC to AD 400. The research compares culinary traditions and foodways of Early and Middle Woodland populations in southeastern Wisconsin using multiple lines of fined grained material data derived from the Finch site (47JE0902). As an open air Early to Middle Woodland (ca 100 BC to AD 400) domestic habitation, the Finch site serves as a case study for elucidating culinary traditions and foodways …

Minors In The Mines: Archaeological Indicators Of Child Labor In Prehistoric Mining Contexts In Europe, Nikita K. Werner

Theses and Dissertations

Developing a theoretical and methodological framework for the study of children, childhood, and child labor in prehistory has two goals. The first is to reintegrate children into cultural narratives in light of the increased popularity of the topic among archaeologists; the second is to equip researchers with the tools to apply developing theories to prehistoric populations in which there is material and physical evidence of child labor. Using the prehistoric mining complex of Hallstatt in alpine Austria as a case study, this thesis highlights how a reevaluation of existing data can provide a more inclusive interpretation of childhood even in …

Less Than Human: A Study Of The Institutional Origins Of The Medical Waste Recovered At The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery, Alexander Anthony

Theses and Dissertations

Poor Laws enacted in the early 19th-century condemned the most destitute to confinement in almshouses, poor farms, and workhouses. These laws paralleled contemporary Anatomy Acts that turned the unclaimed bodies of individuals who died at those institutions over to medical facilities for dissection, often simultaneously removing anatomization as a punishment for murder. In essence, pauperism became punishable by anatomization. Thus, dissection served the dual purpose of reinforcing social identity amongst the lower class and privileging the social identity of upper-class medical students. This study is an analysis of the material medical waste recovered from the graves of individuals interred at …

"Buried...Like A Human Being" At The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery: A Bioarchaeological Approach To Defining Fetal And Infant Personhood Through Biological Development, Historical Discourse, And Diapering, Brianne Charles

Theses and Dissertations

The ambiguity of life is visible in the complex sets of beliefs that cultures develop around abortion, stillbirth, and neonatal death. This research grew out of ambiguities surrounding bioarchaeological methods of age estimation among fetal and infant remains and the need for additional lines of evidence to define what a prenatal or postnatal age contextually means, how these definitions were upheld or challenged, and what impact these definitions had on the mortuary treatment of these bodies.

Discernment between fetal and infant skeletal remains is important to forensic investigations and bioarchaeological questions of personhood, infant mortality, and maternal health. However, skeletal …

Using Historic Glo Data And Gis To Assess The Potential For Local Bison Bison Near Two Wisconsin Late Prehistoric Oneota Localities, Andrew Michael Saleh

Theses and Dissertations

Bison (Bison bison) remains are rare in the archaeological record of Wisconsin. This thesis uses a Geographic Information System (GIS) to better understand native vegetation near sites with reported bison bone to assess their ecological viability to support local bison herds. The distribution of bison bone recovered in archaeological contexts in Wisconsin can be summarized as follows: few sites report bison remains, the archaeological contexts that do report bison are clustered in a few Late Prehistoric period locations (approximately A.D. 1300-1650), and bison remains are rare in comparison to other fauna at those sites (Arzigian et al. 1989; Boszhardt 1989, …

Evolution Of Endurance Running Genes Across Primates, Natalia T. Grube

Theses and Dissertations

The endurance running hypothesis has emerged as a key idea to explain several unique anatomical, physiological, and genetic features of modern humans—among these features is the evolution of ACTN3 (Bramble & Lieberman 2004, Nature), a gene linked to human athletic performance. An additional gene linked to human endurance performance is ACE. Because endurance running is a uniquely human trait, I predicted that ACE and ACTN3 genes would be evolving adaptively in the human lineage when examined in a wider primatological framework. To test this I compiled ACE and ACTN3 genes from 14 primate species and phylogenetically tested if these genes …

The Intersections Of Health And Wealth: Socioeconomic Status, Frailty, And Mortality In Industrial England, Samantha Lee Yaussy

Theses and Dissertations

Socioeconomic status (SES) is considered one of the most powerful predictors of mortality today. However, studies of health in living populations and bioarchaeological studies of health in the past often oversimplify the connection between SES and mortality and overlook heterogeneity in frailty within a population and the potential for multiple types of marginalization to be layered within a single individual. This dissertation project uses skeletal samples to examine the interactions of SES, demographic characteristics (e.g., age and sex), exposure to physiological stressors, and mortality in the context of industrialization in 18th- and 19th-century England. Skeletal data from four industrial-era cemeteries …

African American Hair And Beauty: Examining Afrocentricity And Identity Through The Reemergence And Expression Of Natural Hair In The 21st Century, Tiffany Nicole Peacock

Theses and Dissertations

In the 21st century, African American women are challenging the stereotypes and limitations of who or what defines beauty. More African American women are cutting off their relaxed tresses and starting anew with the natural roots that was inherited from their African ancestors. The recent transition challenges post-colonial ideas of what it means to have good or bad hair through the empowerment of Black men and women. Rooted within the Black Power and Black is Beautiful movements of the 1970s, African American women are no longer accepting or tolerating how someone else will define their hair. By altering their kinky, …

Creating A Place: Mulberry Site (38ke12) Interpretation And Exhibition, Abigail Geedy

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis interprets the place and archaeological collections of the Mulberry site (38KE12) through a community-focused lens and applies that interpretation into text for a museum exhibition. Mulberry is a multi-mound Mississippian town in central South Carolina that was likely inhabited by ancestral Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Muscogee (Creek), and/or Catawba Indian Nation peoples. Utilizing entanglement, place-making studies, and Indigenous worldview studies as grounding theory, oral histories and ethnographies are applied to the physical landscape and artifactual remains of the site in an effort to understand the ways that people interacted with objects and the landscape to create meaning-laden …

A Choice To Engage: Selective Marginality And Dynamic Households On The 18th-19th Century Irish Coast, Meagan Conway

Theses and Dissertations

This research explores the nature of marginality on the peripheries of empire in 18th and 19th century rural Ireland. These shifting imperial borders, both cultural and geographic, are historically fluid spaces that have potential to impact individual decision-making, spark cultural change, and alter social dynamics under the pressures of foreign rule. This project focuses on individual rural households off the coast of western Ireland to understand the selective engagement (choices to accept or reject externally generated ideologies) of households in transnational systems, and the ways islanders generated a material reaction to prescribed narratives of marginality from the imperial epicenter. Expressions …

Nature, Identity, And Pastoralism: Changing Landscapes And Shifting Paradigms In The Mongolian Taiga, Jessica Vinson

Theses and Dissertations

The traditional environment of pastoralism is under assault from land degradation, rangeland conservation, and development paradigms that alter the everyday lives of Tsataan Dukha reindeer herders in the Mongolian taiga. This paper seeks to analyze the ways in which identity is shaped through experiences of or relationships with particular nonhuman places and beings, and how the Tsataan Dukha renegotiate their individual and collective identities with changing local landscapes that exert considerable pressures upon the social, political, and economic organization of Dukha life. Senses of place and of space are intimately tied to a sense of self, so disruption in environmental …

Chilled To The Bone: An Analysis On The Effects Of Cold Temperatures And Weather Conditions Altering The Decomposition Process In Pig ( Sus Scrofa ) Remains, Katharine C. Woollen

Theses and Dissertations

Temperature is one of the most crucial variables affecting the decomposition process, significantly increasing or decreasing the rate at which decomposition occurs. Few studies have been conducted to show how the effects of cold temperatures and weather conditions influence the postmortem interval (PMI). The PMI is defined as the amount of time that has passed since death. The purpose of this study was to evaluate estimations for the PMI when remains are exposed to cold temperatures and weather conditions. Secondly, this study seeks to explain whether variables (i.e., coverings, burial depth, soil pH) can affect the decomposition process during colder …